


Double O Five

by thefudge



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Amoral Sweethearts, F/M, Femme Fatale, Terrible Together, Villain Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-07 00:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18227408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: “To be honest, I haven’t yet found your equal.”Five rolls his eyes.  Her specialty is empty compliments, pieces of candy with which she tries to entice him.“Have you found mine?” she asks, gazing at him with hooded eyes.





	Double O Five

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pretty much gonna get cracking on every minor oddball ship this show has. Stop me if you can!  
> (also, these two are FIRE)

Hazel was right about growing up; it’s worth doing at least once.

It’s good to be twenty and feel like you have the whole world at your disposal. It’s great not to need a chaperone or be denied a cup of coffee.

Yes, it’s really nice not being thirteen anymore.

So it’s really annoying to have to put on these fucking schoolboy shorts again.

But a bet is a bet, and he lost this one.

“You know it’s rude to keep a lady waiting. I don’t have all day,” the Handler calls out from the other room.

“You actually have _every_  day,” he snaps, stuffing the white shirt into his trousers’ band.  

He can hear her moving across the room, heels perforating the carpet. There’s an insolent thump as she plops herself down.

“ _Fine_ , but my patience is not as endless as my supply of time.”

Five heaves a weary, old-man sigh. The things he has to do to keep the world safe…

All right, maybe this is less about the fate of all mankind and more about a game of time-chess (like regular chess, only harder and involving actual time events) that he only lost because she _cheated_.

Still.

He’s a man of honor, unlike her.

He hates that there’s this weird acidic feeling in his stomach, almost like nerves. He _never_ gets nervous. Afraid? Sure. Concerned? Always. But this is neither.

“Five, if you don’t come out right this instant –”

He grunts and pushes the bathroom door open.

The Handler is lounging on the settee in her black silk dress which has the unique quality of looking both like an office suit and an intimate undergarment.  

When he appears in the doorway she sits up, eyebrows raised dramatically.

“Oh, my.”

Five folds his arms over his chest and glowers.  

“And you put on the Boy Scout tie too. You’re killing me, sweets,” The Handler moans, pressing a hand to her chest.

“I don’t like to half-ass things," he mutters self-consciously. 

"Oh, you most certainly _don't_."

He winces at whatever innuendo she is contemplating as he tries to fight off a blush. A blush, of all things!

But it’s difficult not to squirm when her insect eyes blink in predatory assessment. She scours every inch of him, settling finally on his knee-high socks.

She leans back on the settee, letting the dress glide down her legs.

“You are simply delectable, Five. Is it odd to say you pull off this uniform even better now?”

“Are you implying I make a better thirteen year old in my twenties?”

She shrugs. “Semantics.”

“Semantics, indeed.” He brushes the hair from his forehead. “All right, a deal’s a deal. I humiliated myself for your pleasure, now –”

The Handler smiles. “Always in a rush. Why don’t you take a few steps? Let me see you from _all_ angles.”

“Are you serious?”

She chuckles. “I don’t dabble in rhetorical questions, do I?”

“You _just_ did.”

“Only to prove a point that is rhetorical. So get to it, or I might never stop.”

Five scowls. He may think she’s pure, plasticized evil – or the embodiment of extreme moral laxity, which is almost the same thing – but he can’t deny she has a way of eluding him with words alone.

Slippery as an eel. Like that dress she’s wearing. Not that he’s looked.

He detaches himself from the wall with another grunt.

He stalks across the room slowly and stops by the minibar. He pours himself a drink from the decanter. Her eyes follow him and pin him to the spot. He throws several ice cubes in the glass angrily and swallows whole chunks.  His teeth rattle.

He knows she’s looking at his ass.

“Have you had enough?” he drawls.

The Handler sighs. “Of you? Never.”

 Sometimes Five is almost tempted to take her at her word. Her flirtatious manner is a deceptive piece of armor that strikes when you least expect, but it’s lately gotten more aggressive.

“Getting lonely, H?” he teases back, shoving his hands in his shorts’ pockets.

Her expression is almost pensive as she regards him.

“People like us are always lonely.”

Five feels a small chink of ice under his tongue. He swallows the rest of his drink.

“But if you’re implying that I’ve grown desperate,” she continues more spiritedly, “then you’re insulting yourself, darling. I wouldn’t make eyes at you just to console myself.”

“No?”

The question comes off more genuine than sarcastic. He bites his tongue.

 She shakes her head. “To be honest, I haven’t yet found your equal.”

Five rolls his eyes.  Her specialty is empty compliments, pieces of candy with which she tries to entice him. 

“Have you found mine?” she asks, gazing at him with hooded eyes.

Five scoffs _. Of course_ he has. There are _scores_ of women out there who are far more competent, more intelligent, and less goddamn infuriating than her.

He just – he can’t think of one specifically at this moment – they’re all rather abstract and he can’t _focus_ with her here –

She chuckles. “Just as I thought.”

Five grits his teeth. She’s impossible to talk to.

“Next round of chess is on me,” he says, glaring. “And when you inevitably lose I’m going to make you regret it.”

 The Handler grins. “I look forward to it. How exactly _are_ you going to make me regret it?”

Five watches as she loosens the cordon of her dress.

He swallows. “No, not like _that_. I know you’re shameless. So I’d have you do something you hate, like community service.”

She has the decency to wrinkle her nose. “Ugh, God, that sounds incredibly _dull_.”

He smiles. “Exactly.”

She smiles back.

They’re almost civil for a moment. He doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like this unmapped state when he’s around her. They’re nowhere and everywhere, quite literally.

She seems to guess his line of thinking. “You hate it, don’t you?”

“You’ll have to be more specific. I hate many things.”

She runs a red nail down her thigh. “That we get along so well.”

Five makes a face. “We don’t get along.”

She winks. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

And it’s true, she hasn’t so far. No one knows that he sneaks off to meet her now and again.

It’s a force of habit. Better to know what your enemy is doing at all times than afford surprises.

It hits him then that he’s still wearing his stupid uniform.

“Okay, you’ve had your fun,” he drawls and marches towards the bathroom.

The Handler tuts behind him. “One of these days, Five, you’re going to have to admit the truth.”

 He leaves the door slightly ajar as he starts to remove his clothes. Wouldn’t want her sneaking up on him with Hitler’s gun, would he?

“And what truth is that?”

He expects a snarky, waspish response. Something about his unavoidable attraction to her, something to make him gag.

But as always, he underestimates the Handler.

“That you’re an addict.”

He pauses as he unbuttons his shirt. He fingers the button, pressing it into his thumb.

This is exactly what Klaus said too. _You’re addicted to the apocalypse._

And when there isn’t an apocalypse? He latches onto things that are bad for him, very, _very_ bad.

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us,” he retorts without much bite.

He doesn’t sense her, too wrapped up in the notion of addiction. He doesn’t realize she’s suddenly behind him. She doesn’t have his gift for teleportation, but she’s nimble.

He freezes with his shirt half down his shoulders.

The Handler’s fingers brush down his bare arms as she takes it off for him. He fights the electric shock that runs through him. He can see her face in the mirror. It doesn’t look smug for once, but it’s hard to tell with her.

“We’re each other’s drug of choice, Five. It makes sense, really, why you make such an effort not to touch me or be near me.”

“Does it?” his voice cracks a little at the end as she breathes hot air at the back of his throat.

“Mhm. Like with most potent drugs, you wouldn’t be able to stop.”

Five closes his eyes. He can smell her cheap perfume, can smell the inkling of blood on her fingers. Her inimitable decay. He would sink his nose there and never recover.

 Her lips ghost over his shoulder.

He disappears, leaving her with empty hands.

 

 

“Jesus, who kicked you out with your trousers down your legs?” is the first thing Klaus tells him when he materializes in his room.

“ _What_? What are you talking about –”

Klaus laughs. “It’s a little obvious, isn’t it?”

Five stops, looks down. _Shit_. He forgot he was halfway to undressing when he walked out on her. His mind just blanked for a second. Tabula rasa.

“Fess up, what did you do? Call her fat? You can tell your big brother.”

Five rolls his eyes. “It was an accident.”

“Wait…are you…wearing the old uniform?”

Five groans and disappears before more questioning ensues.

 

 

She calls him on the phone late one night.

“Hey, Double O Five.”

Five will soon develop a tick in his jaw from locking it so often.

“Evening, Hag.”

Their proffered nicknames out of the way, she gets right down to business.

“Meet me at Casino di Venezia tomorrow at 7 PM sharp.”

“Why should I?”

“Why should you _not_? Anyway, the year is 1774. So breeches and socks are mandatory.”

Five pinches the bridge of his nose.

“This is just a pretext to see me in shorts again, isn’t it?”

He can practically hear her grin on the other line. “Do you really care to find out?”

“ _Bye_.”

He always forgets to tell her no.

He always means to.

But the next day he’s standing by the docks in Venice, hating himself for how much he wants to see her.

Just to get the last word in. Just to get one more hit.

One final game of chess. 

And then he’ll never contact her again.

Until next time.


End file.
